Reviews

The Oxford Book of American Short Stories by Langston Hughes, John Cheever, James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Washington Irving, Joyce Carol Oates, Willa Cather, Henry James, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Updike, Saul Bellow, Eudora Welty, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Raymond Carver, Edith Wharton, Bernard Malamud, Katherine Anne Porter, William Carlos Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

varunmunjal's review against another edition

5.0

Herman Melville is thought a great writer only because everyone else is probably thinking so. But he is not. Otherwise a great book.

adiumeck's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

kluvable23's review against another edition

4.0

Very interesting. A wide variety of dazzling and inspiring short stories. I also enjoyed the small synopsizes' of the authors with the stories as well.

ginger_introvert's review against another edition

4.0

Good anthology of American short stories over time.

lindseygwilson's review against another edition

Just read Willa Cather's A Death in the Desert. I love the way that woman writes!!

6-2-2011
I'm going to keep a list of the short stories I read before this anthology goes back to the library (I'm sure I won't have time to read it cover-to-cover).

Rip van Winkle, by Washington Irving
Peter Rugg, the Missing Man, by William Austin
The Wives of the Dead, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allen Poe
The Ghost in the Mill, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
A White Heron, by Sarah Orne Jewett
The Storm, by Kate Chopin --Ugh! Not my cup of tea.
A Death in the Desert, by Willa Cather
A Late Encounter with the Enemy, by Flannery O'Connor --This one had me laugh out loud a couple times!
There Will Come Soft Rains, by Ray Bradbury
The Sheriff's Children, by Charles Chesnutt
The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I'll have to check this anthology out from the library again sometime. I enjoyed what I was able to read in the time I borrowed it.

lukescalone's review against another edition

5.0

I picked this up as my first major foray into pre-2010s American short stories, and this is definitely the place to start. Joyce Carol Oates's selections are (mostly) good, but the real treasure is that she gives biographical information before each story and--sometimes--offers a little bit of the historical and literary context the stories sit in. I'm excited to read more.

evansee's review

3.0

This anthology has some really outstanding works in it, while others are less interesting, or odd choices of work from otherwise brilliant authors. Certainly worth purchasing if you're looking for an affordable collection of short fiction.

la_cori's review

4.0

sono arrivata in fondo a questo mattoncino!! ^_^ Il piano era di leggere un racconto al giorno, ma sono stata parecchio discontinua e solo nelle ultime due settimane mi sono impuntata per finirlo..
Una bella raccolta di racconti, di nomi più o meno noti (a me) della letteratura americana. Non ho apprezzato tutti i racconti alla stessa maniera (e neanche me lo aspettavo, visto che sono più di 60 storie!), ma in generale il mio è un giudizio più che positivo.

alyssamg8's review

2.0

an anthology of "canon" literature full of over-read, over-analyzed short stories. needed it for a college course.

corey's review

A cool (not-so) little anthology, curated by Joyce Carol Oates. I'm not gonna give it a star-rating, because I never know how to rate anthologies, but it's certainly good reading. Oates put together a collection of little-known stories by America's most well-known writers, from Edgar Allen Poe to Junot Diaz. My only real complaint is that Oates made the odd choice of including her own work in the collection, putting her story alongside Hemingway's and Carver's. You have to laugh a little at a stunt like that.